Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Fucking hospital and fucking snowbird geriatrics are really pissing me off. How dare they shuttle between Sloan-Kettering and my Mt. Sinai? Don't they realize that us locals have first priority here? I kid, but not really. Yesterday was yet another clusterfuck of a day at the hospital. Went in for bloodwork. Gave Doc Schwartz some of my Cancer Is the New Black nipple coasters. He loves.

"Yeah, Dr. Love [the onco who interviewed me for a teaching CD] didn't seem to get what 'Cancer Is the New Black' meant, so I had to explain to him the whole fashion lexicon and how each season another color or accessory is the 'new black.'"

"Oh, I got it right away and think it's clever," he said. I am paraphrasing. (If only my doctors were publishers. I'd so have a six-figure deal by now. I'm even more ridiculously dramatic and amusing in person, my friends will attest.)

"I know right? Probably because you're a New Yorker."

"Yeah, maybe."

I just looooooooove Dr. Schwartz. If you have to do breast cancer, he's the man. Anywho, all the old bags were waiting in the public area. Germs were just escaping out of their mouths. And once again Michael (head nurse) said he was going to have to ask me to wait outside. So I told him to check to see if the pharmacy had blended my cocktail yet; he said no. I told him ciao, that I'd be back tomorrow. That way I'd come in, they'd call the pharmacy and I'd be in and out. So here I am hooked up to the IV.

Yesterday was a fuck of a day too. Starting with the hospital saga and culminating in me getting home, handing the keys to valet, feeling a stabbing pain in my left heel only to look down and see a piece of glass stuck in my foot! A piece of glass that was seemingly lurking inside my Walter Steigers waiting for the right moment to fuck with me. And you know how careful I have to be about infections, so there I am carrying all my groceries and sundries, limping into my building, entering my apartment, ignoring Wally while I race around screaming and searching for my medical supplies. I'm not even going to get into how long it took me to dress this pin-prick-sized cut. And then just to be safe I had the chemo nurse dress it for me again just now.

I did have a haircut yesterday and it looks good. Similar to the way it was before, but more even and piecey. Everyone seems to think my hair looks so much better—implying that my hair looked fugly before?—and I can see what they mean. BUT I feel like it makes me look older, un-sexy (if I ever were sexy I feel even less so now) and a whole hot mess of other things.

Oh, the topper on the day was that I woke up reaaaaaally stressed, longing for Xanax. All-day, Xanax on the brain. (Klonopins are nice, but they don't give you the high, la la la feeling that Xannies do.) Got to CVS—only do I go there in desparation after my lil mom and pop pharm is closed—and the fuckers wouldn't give me the pills because Schwartz forgot to write the # of pills. That wasn't pretty.

Then I got home and cut the foot. I've been at hospital all-day. I had my transvaginal ultrasound. This looks at your ovaries and your cervix. Though the radiologist will read them later, the nurses proclaimed that I have "beautiful ovaries!"

"Well, we all have different definitions of beauty, but I'll take that."

Oh, and I keep forgetting to check on my foreclosed apartment. Dad says he gave me the info to go online but fuck if I know where it is. I could be living in a box by next week! Stay tuned!

Doc Schwartz told me today that yes, one year after your most substantial/comprehensive surgery, I'm officially Cancer-free. So this is the face and the place of the Cancer-free zone. My mastectoversary photos. Some (the good ones) were taken by friend and artiste extraordinaire Tomas.